Lava XOLO X900 Preview

 

It’s not always we get to use a smartphone that has an Intel processor inside so when we got the opportunity, we jumped on it. For those who are not aware, the Lava XOLO X900 is the first phone in the world to use an Intel processor and its x86 architecture, and is on sale right now in India. Meanwhile, another version of this phone called the Orange San Diego is now making its way to shops in Europe and this is just the beginning as you’ll be seeing a lot more devices running an Intel processor by the end of this year.

But all that for later. For now, catch us after the break for a quick preview of the world’s first smartphone with Intel inside. 

Design

The design of the Lava XOLO X900 is virtually identical to the Intel FFRD (Form Factor Reference Design) that we first saw back in December 2011. It seemed fine for a reference design but looks quite bland when seen on a retail product. The X900 looks simple to the point of being boring and it won’t be winning any beauty contests. Build quality isn’t particularly impressive either and the all-plastic body tends to creak a bit when held tightly.

Going around the device we see the 4.03-inch display up front with the earpiece, front facing camera and various sensors on top above and the four control keys below. On the right are the volume control keys, microSIM tray, camera shutter button and the right stereo speaker. On the left are a microHDMI port and the left stereo speaker. On top is the power/sleep button with the headphone jack and on the bottom is a microUSB port. On the back are an 8 megapixel sensor with LED flash and a secondary microphone.

You can remove the cover on the back, but there is no reason you would need to. You can access the battery underneath but it is attached using cables instead of contact points so it’s not user replaceable.

The X900 is a long phone and the display is placed near the top so you need to adjust your grip to be able to reach its upper portion comfortably. The power button on top is placed somewhat inconveniently and is hard to use at times. 

Display 

The Lava XOLO X900 uses a 4.03-inch TFT LCD with a resolution of 1,024 x 600 pixels and Gorilla Glass coating. Quality-wise, the display is nothing special. The colors are muted, the brightness and contrast are average and the image distorts when seen off angle.

The display refresh rate also doesn’t seem to be very high, which leads to noticeable motion blur in some games. The only redeeming aspect about this display is its resolution, which coupled with the relatively small 4-inch size gives it an impressive 295 PPI pixel density. This makes things look tack sharp, but also very small at times.

The OS doesn’t seem to have been optimized for this pixel density and you’ll notice everything on this phone looks generally smaller than on other phones. On the homescreen, for example, you will see the same number of icons as on other phones but they are all small and spaced out. Things should be looking much better when the Android 4.0 upgrade arrives, as Ice Cream Sandwich has HD as its native resolution. 

Performance

 

The Lava XOLO X900 runs on Intel’s Medfield platform. The SoC on this phone is the Atom Z2460, also known as Penwell. It consists of the single-core 1.6GHz Saltwell CPU and the PowerVR SGX540 GPU, clocked at 400MHz. Then there’s also 1GB of dual-channel LPDDR2 memory and 16GB storage space (non-expandable). The X900 runs on Android 2.3.7 Gingerbread.